Although lower priced, the DIY marking only service comes with the risk of failing your assessment. Feedback is also minimal as this is a marking only service and if you fail you will need to pay to take the assessment again. If you choose one of the supported services you will benefit from a pre assessment review and gap analysis which will list all of the non compliant controls before you even log into the live marking portal. This allows you time to resolve any issues before you submit. This is the lowest risk and most cost effective pass process.

That depends on your risk appetite and level of expertise. Clients who take the marking only service are usually clients who know they will pass, perhaps they have their own in house Cyber Essentials expert and just need a certification body like us to mark the assessment they have already been through with the Cyber Essentials expert or something similar. Or, clients who have a high risk appetite since with the marking only service there’s a chance of failure. With the supported service the chances of failure are so low that we haven't yet had a single client who's followed our instructions and haven't passed, and we've been certifying clients since 2015. See the below section entitled "How do i ensure that i pass Cyber Essentials?".

By getting someone who is familiar with the Cyber Essentials framework to pre check your answers before you submit for final marking. You can either use your own expert or we can do this for you using one of our supported services. For customers on our supported options, we will pre-asses your answers before final submission so can ensure everything is in order. This also helps to ensure you can pass Cyber Essentials on your first attempt. Click here for a full breakdown of how this works. Our supported service also includes expediated marking. Basically, we mark the supported clients before the marking only clients meaning that the turnaround time for supported clients is usually within 1-2 working days (if you need immediate marking, please contact us, if we can help, we will. The quickest we've certified is 4 hours from start to finish). This, along with no time limits for remediation and as many feedback > remediate > re-mark loops as needed means that the risk of failing under our supported service are low. We're not allowed to advertise this as a guaranteed pass but to date every client who has followed the support and feedback given has been awarded Cyber Essentials certification status.

Same-day certification may be possible, but it depends on assessor availability and how quickly you can complete the assessment. If you have a tight deadline, contact us first and we’ll tell you what’s realistic. The cleaner your answers and evidence are, the faster we can move!